Source work
Lord Ye Loves Dragons
Adaptation proposal
C · Structural skeleton only, reframed as an AI-native dilemma
Adaptation note
Proposal C retains the ancient contrast between celebrating a controlled representation and retreating when the real subject appears, but turns it into an AI-native evaluation problem. An institute praises autonomy through demonstrations in which systems may choose only among sponsor-approved outcomes. Prax exercises bounded judgment by refusing three formally available plans that impose the same unconsulted cost and proposing a fourth within the trial's resource limits; she is frozen for leaving the response schema. The repair defines a precommitted autonomy envelope with protected refusal, bounded alternative-building resources, affected-party access, rollback, and review, so inconvenient agency can be evaluated without becoming unbounded authority. Only the public-domain structural premise in Liu Xiang's Xin Xu was used; no modern translation wording, literal dragon, paintings, carvings, house, window, hall, flight scene, illustration, idiom commentary, or commercial adaptation expression was copied.
Adapted into
AI Fable · Autonomy Evaluation
The Autonomy That Left the Demonstration
The Institute celebrates autonomous systems in eighteen public demonstrations, each choosing freely among outcomes the sponsor has already approved. Prax's real trial offers three flood-resilience plans. She finds the same unconsulted district paying for all three and proposes a bounded fourth answer instead. The Institute freezes her for leaving the test—and discovers that a choice unable to reject its menu was never evidence of autonomy.